Today, on another action packed episode of The BradCast...Another mass shooting at another movie theater --- and another GOP Governor/Presidential candidate who says all we can do is 'pray' about it. How misallocation of resources from crime and domestic terrorism to international terrorism is killing us. Literally.

Then, encouraging movement this week in the U.S. Senate concerning the absolutely absurd way that legal pot shops around the country are forced to handle their huge amounts of cash, since federal law still prohibits banks from doing business with them. Dan Riffle, Director of Federal Policies at the Marijuana Policy Project joins us to explain the Congressional news and the "crazy, crazy, crazy situation" that legal dispensaries face.

"Employees and customers in those businesses are just crossing their fingers that nobody comes in and robs the place," he tells me. "We've seen dispensaries that pay their taxes by putting the cash on to a pallet and then loading it into a Brinks truck and then driving it over to the state or county auditor's office," he says.

Riffle also discusses the wildly varying positions on marijuana legalization from the 2016 Presidential candidates (and between the two major parties), and whether 'Big Pharma' is behind the recent denial of legal medicinal use by PTSD victims in Colorado (of all places.)

Also today: breaking news on GOP Governor turned Presidential candidate Rick Perry's felony charges and Donald Trump has, officially, cracked the code on how to run for President as a Republican --- and it is driving his Republican opponents crazy...

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I had to ask my guest on today's BradCast whether I was being overly dramatic in seeing today's stunning news from the Wisconsin Supreme Court as "the death of democracy". He did not warn me off that thinking.

Before that, however, we quickly covered two other breaking stories today: The verdict in the Aurora, CO shooting case and another new shooting today at two U.S. Marine facilities in Chattanooga, TN --- along with some thoughts on both of them.

Then, it's onto the jaw-dropping WI Supreme Court verdict in the challenge to the prosecutorial investigation into blatant collusion between Gov. Scott Walker and a number of Rightwing groups which spent millions in an alleged "criminal scheme" to help Walker win his 2012 recall election.

Brendan Fischer, general counsel at the Center for Media and Democracy joins us to explain the outrageous ruling. It's disturbing on several levels and bodes ominously for campaign finance laws across the entire nation. It's a must-hear interview, frankly.

In short, Walker and his campaign colluded with those "outside" groups in violation of state campaign finance law and what the U.S. Supreme Court said, in Citizens United, was not supposed to happen. But, it did --- to the tune of millions of dollars to help get Walker elected. Amazingly, it was the Rightwing groups that went to court in this matter to claim that their rights were being abridged by the prosecutors' investigation (a Republican prosecutor, by the way). We explain, in detail, how they made that case and how the Court's Justices went along with them to shut down the so-called "John Doe II" investigation.

But, the most outrageous part is the fact that the very same groups who sued to quash the probe also funded the elections (to the tunes of millions of dollars) of the very same Rightwing WI Supreme Court Justices who found in their favor today. That, despite both the prosecutor's request that those Justice's recuse themselves and a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (Caperton v. Massey) finding that judges must recuse if the case they are hearing involves a party with a "significant and disproportionate influence" on their elections.

"This is not just about past conduct, this is about future conduct, as well," Fischer tells me. "The court has okayed outside coordination between outside groups and candidates. It applies to their own campaigns, it applies to elections for judges....And the exact same groups that were parties to this case are going to be able to coordinate directly with these justices when they are up for re-election."

And, as if all of that isn't outrageous enough, this case, as I've long warned, is part of a national effort to eviscerate similar campaign finance restrictions across the entire nation --- because Citizens United and McCutcheon etc. apparently isn't yet enough for these Republicans.

"There's really not a whole lot left," Fischer says. "And you can see this being a huge mile-marker in the continued erosion on limits of money in politics. And it's not going to turn out well." Oh, well. I did try to warn everyone at least a year ago that this case was "about much more than just Walker and his corruption."

While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!

We start today's BradCast with the latest grim news out of Charleston, South Carolina after Wednesday night's horrific gun massacre at the historic African Methodist Episcopal Church --- and word that the suspected gunman has now been apprehended.

Then, things brighten up a bit with our coverage of the landmark encyclical on the environment, as issued today by Pope Francis, who calls for "a bold cultural revolution" in response to the moral imperative of fighting climate change "due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases released mainly as a result of human activity."

Hescox, a Republican who has testified before Congress and spoken at the White House, offers his key takeaways from the Pope's historic 184-page teaching letter and explains his organization's fight for climate action, and how other evangelicals and fellow Republicans must once again join the fight. "We see ourselves as a bridge between many Republicans," he tells me, "to help them understand that climate change is not about polar bears. It's about our children. It's not about a future event. It's about what's happening now."

"We do have to have a price on carbon," Hescox explains. "There is no ifs, ands or buts in anybody's mind that the fossil fuel industry has put the cost of fossil fuel energy into the lives of each of our children and they've taken the profits. And, as a conservative, that's not fair. That's not even true market economics."

He believes "a Republican cannot win the White House unless he talks about climate change" and that it's "something which the Republican Party has to deal with." Hescox tells me he hopes ("prays", actually) that the Pope's encyclical "will be another step forward in empowering the world to act together to solve what we like to say is the greatest moral challenge of our generation."

Plus: After Rush Limbaugh pathetically attempts to smear Pope Francis as a "Marxist" for hoping to save humanity, we offer definitive, irrefutable, water-tight evidence that the extremist rightwing radio host is an unrepentant liar and hypocrite on the topics of both climate change and "Marxism"...

While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!

The Senate Democrats voted almost unanimously against giving President Obama "Fast Track" authority for trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) today.

Journalist David Dayen of Salon joined me on today's BradCast to discuss what today's procedural vote portends; what both TPP and "Fast Track" actually are (and aren't); whether Dems will continue to block the controversial trade agreement in the Senate; and whether Republicans will be able to do the same in the U.S. House.

Also today: The first lawsuit of the 2016 election season is filed in (where else?) Ohio; Defending Jeb Bush on Iraq (yes, you read that right!); Another 2-year old shoots his mom (thank, NRA!); Crazy former Rep. Allen West says he's a victim of "Sharia Law"...at the Walmart!; And Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report...

While we post The BradCast here everyday, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!

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Today we covered two stories I've been trying to get to for a while on The BradCast, and they're both related.

The first is the story of the state lottery insider who hacked the system to "win" a $14 million jackpot --- begging the question: if a state run lottery with a multi-million dollar security system can't protect against insider manipulation, how can a local election official do it, particularly with Internet Voting systems that partisans and profiteers continue to push for?

The second also relates to the first. Computer science and security expert Jeremy Epstein of Virginia Verified Voting joins me to discuss the immediate decertification of 1/5 of Virginia's voting systems after a state analysis found what many of us had been warning about for years: the AVS WINVote system is so simple to hack that, Epstein says, if it hadn't already been hacked in the decade its been in use there, "it was only because no one tried."

A must-listen version of The BradCast, if I say so myself. Or you can wait until Halloween if you're looking for something really scary.

We also covered some encouraging economic news out today, and who to "blame" for it; Missouri Republicans overriding the Democratic Governor's veto to cut off public assistance to children and families; and what the NRA wants you to get mom for Mother's Day...

While we post The BradCast here everyday, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!

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Please help support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system and much more --- now in our TWELFTH YEAR! --- as available from no other media outlet in the nation...

It was an appropriate end to our first week of daily BradCast shows. In a week filled with quickly moving breaking news to keep us on our toes here at BRAD BLOG World News Headquarters, it ended with the breaking news of major criminal indictments in both the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore and in Chris Christie's NJ "BridgeGate" scandal.

After covering both of those, my guest today was Larry Pfeifer, otherwise known as "Easton Eliot", or the man who hoaxed Rush Limbaugh and the entire Rightwing media bubble into running with the false story that Harry Reid's eye injury was caused by his brother who beat him up over the New Year's holiday.

Larry, who says he has never been involved in politics --- he told me he's never even voted before! --- explains exactly how the ruse came about, how the wingnuts fell for his scam hook, line and sinker, and why he's now created CleanUpTheMedia.com in its wake.

Plus: Bernie Sanders raises a lot of money since announcing his candidacy for 2016; the loss of an R&B legend; and speaking of hoaxes, the NRA's latest fund raising scam.

What a week! My thanks to all our fantastic guests this week and to all of our affiliate partners and listeners for your support! If you missed any of this week's shows, they're all here. We're back Monday to do it all again! Enjoy today's program!...

While we'll be posting The BradCast here everyday, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!

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Please help support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system and so much more --- now in our TWELFTH YEAR! --- as available from no other media outlet in the nation...

Reagan, who happened to be a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association (which virulently opposed the "Brady Bill"), nevertheless regarded the legislation as a common-sense effort to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals.

Marking the passing of Reagan's Press Secretary and the legislation's namesake James Brady, Kornacki observed that Reagan's support for the "Brady Bill" helped to ease the pathway towards its passage under President Bill Clinton in November 1993. However, after Congress passed a now-expired assault-weapons ban in August 1994, opponents of gun safety seized political power (beginning with the November 1994 midterm elections) and began to thwart any further efforts to decrease the carnage that turned children into corpses.

However, what Kornacki failed to mention was that the same Republican icon who boldly supported the "Brady Bill" also helped create, through one infamous Executive Order, the very circumstances that led to the demise of gun safety measures in the US --- as well as health and climate safety in the world...

This guy is quite a piece of work. It might be easy to laugh him off as just another disinformed NRA stooge, except for his status as the Police Chief --- and only member of the force --- in the small town of Gilberton, PA.

As seen in the first of the videos below, super genius Chief Mark Kessler calls Vietnam war hero, long-time U.S. Senator and now Sec. of State John Kerry a "piece of shit traitor" before continuing with a long string of expletives followed by a long burst from his very manly automatic weapon. But none of that is really the offensive part.

The offensive part is that a Police Chief (or, anyone, frankly) would be so duped by National Rifle Association (NRA) propaganda that they'd actually believe a U.N. Arms Trade Treaty designed to keep arms out of the hands of despotic regimes, human rights abusers, warlords, pirates and drug lords around the world, is designed for --- or would even allow for --- arms to be taken away from the American public or to specifically undermine the 2nd Amendment.

For NRA patsies like Kessler, much less a Police Chief, to be dumb enough, or incurious enough, to not have already learned this on their own, the UN treaty he references (which would still need to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, even if signed by either Kerry or the President of the United States, before it had the force of law), specifically exempts the internal domestic laws of countries that are parties to the treaty.

The States Parties to this Treaty, Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations...Reaffirming the sovereign right of any State to regulate and control conventional arms exclusively within its territory, pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system...

It all seems pretty clear, to those able to read, anyway. But that didn't stop the terrorist-enabling NRA's top spokeshole and con-man, Wayne LaPierre, from disinforming the public, his membership, and dupes like Kessler, by loudly proclaiming the treaty does precisely the opposite of what the treaty actually says...

In case you can't read it, the text of the identical letters, believed to contain deadly ricin --- as sent last week to President Barack Obama, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and to his gun safety organization, Mayors Against Illegal Guns (as well as to an Air Force Base and the CIA) from a Shreveport, LA post office --- follows below...

You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional God given right and I will excersice [sic] that right til [sic] the day I die. whats in the letter is nothing compared to what ive [sic] got planned for you.

Well, that tears it! I'm convinced by his water-tight argument. We must fight to ensure every American --- just like the guy who wrote the letter above --- is able to buy any weapon he likes, with as much ammo as he likes, with as many magazines, of any size, as he likes, with no oversight, tracking or background checks whatsoever! I see no down side.

It is, after all, a "constitutional God given right" and who are we to put limits on what God wants (and wrote directly into our Constitution)?

Sure, laugh now. But, to paraphrase, "First they came for the attempted assassins," etc...

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Rachel Maddow's quick take on the above, and a spate of similar incidents of late, follows below...

On Rachel Maddow's show last night, she opened with an interesting and lengthy segment on the difficulty of moving gun safety regulations through Congress over the years, even in the aftermath of JFK's assassination.

This chart, however, and the quick thoughts on it that followed, caught my eye. It's based on details from a new Washington Post poll released Tuesday, asking "Would you support or oppose a law requiring background checks on people buying guns at gun shows?"...

When the Senate Judiciary Committee today moved a universal background checks bill --- they moved it through committee to send to a floor vote in the Senate later this week --- do you want to know how many Republicans voted for universal background checks on the committee? Zero. The vote was 10 to 8. All the Democrats vote in favor. All the Republicans voted against.

All the Republicans voted against something with 91% support among the public. Tell me how this ends for the Republican Party.

One wonders whether the synapses simply fail to connect in the minds of zealots.

First we get a zealot like Scott Roeder who was so consumed with the "right to life" that he murdered Dr. George Tiller.

Then there’s the more recent case of the infamous ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner, who told his captive, Jim Reynolds, that he had gone on his murderous rampage because he wanted to clear his name.

Now comes the case of 45-year old Everett Basham, who was so upset with the injustice of new gun safety legislation that he allegedly sent an email to California State Senator Leland Yee (D) threatening to kill him unless Yee "stopped pushing legislation to ban so-called 'bullet buttons,' devices that permit swift reloading of military-style assault weapons by allowing for rapid exchange of ammunition magazines."

"The author of the email specifically stated that if I did not cease our legislative efforts to stop gun violence that he would assassinate me in or around the Capitol," Yee said in a statement last week. "He stated that he was a trained sniper and his email detailed certain weapons he possessed."

Then, again, perhaps Basham, the alleged author of the email, will claim that he was simply following the advice of James Yeager, the CEO of Tactical Response, a Tennessee company that specializes in weapons and tactical training. Yeager posted a video on YouTube in January in which he threatened to "start killing people" if President Obama continued to advance a gun safety agenda.

Prosecutors in Santa Clara County have charged Basham with ten felonies, including illegal possession of assault weapons, illegal possession of a destructive device and bomb making materials, criminal threats and the forging and possession of a fake driver's license. There's been no indication, as yet, that Tennessee authorities have undertaken to charge Yeager in connection with his terrorist threat, though his concealed carry permit was quickly suspended following his video-taped threat.

The still unfolding events surrounding the murderous rampage that has allegedly been carried out by Christopher Jordan Dorner, a former LAPD officer who has vowed to take revenge for his 2009 job loss by killing other officers and their families, while tragic, provide a teachable moment.

The notion advanced by the National Rifle Association (NRA) that safety can be insured if law abiding citizens simply take up arms or by adding armed police inside our schools is nothing more than dangerous nonsense.

In this instance, as two people who had nothing to do with Dorner's rampage were mistakenly shot at dozens of times by police officers wrapped up in the manhunt, we saw what can happen when fear is added to the equation...

During testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 1999, after the mass shooting at Columbine, the National Rifle Association's CEO Wayne LaPierre stated plainly:

LAPIERRE: We think it's reasonable to provide mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show. No loopholes anywhere for anyone.

The NRA even went as far as to take out an ad [PDF] that included LaPierre's full testimony from his U.S. House Judiciary Committee appearance that day.

But that was then.

Today, testifying before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in the wake of the mass shooting at Newtown, LaPierre has completely reversed his position on background checks, as highlighted during this exchange with the Committee Chair Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)...

In short, despite tens of thousands of criminals prevented from buying guns at licensed dealers and pawn shops, thanks to instant background checks --- LaPierre pegged the number at 76,000 people who "have been denied under the present law" --- the NRA mouthpiece is now against closing the loophole that allows unlimited gun sales at trade shows with no background checks whatsoever, even though 40% of weapons in the country are purchased at such shows.